About

ORTIS is currently governed by ten directors, with no more than one from any member board. The ORTIS Board of Directors is not a representational Board, which means that the Directors who serve on ORTIS are there to serve all of the Member Boards, rather than their own Board. Elections are held in the Fall of each calendar year. ORTIS anticipates adapting the number of seats at the Board table as new associations join, while also holding onto the principle that Directors are there to serve ORTIS, as a whole, rather than their own Board or region. New Boards may have an opportunity to nominate their representation to the Board or Directors once they are members in good standing with fees paid in full, and fully operational on the ORTIS system. As a Member of ORTIS you would have the opportunity to participate in various committees, task forces and meetings as an equal partner. We invite each partner to have a voice. Also open to adaptation, currently these working groups include Chief Executive Officer Group (CEOG), Finance, By-law & Governance, Technology, Nominations, Communications, MLS® Rules and the Forms Committee.

ORTIS supports Member Boards owning and being in control of their own data. ORTIS will require a license from each Member Board and an MLS® Services Agreement, which enables aggregation into one central system and access to the data for all our users. The MLS® system data cannot be segregated. It has always been envisioned as a fully regional system and has been built accordingly. The MLS® Services Agreement will define the appropriate terms of use of ORTIS for each Member Board, as well as termination process should any one Board choose to leave.

1. SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS FOR USERSArising from the elimination of multiple board membership and Inter-board listings

2. ECONOMIES OF SCALEArising from the negotiating power of a large — now over 8,000 users with no limit to our potential growth (and further economies of scale)

3. ECONOMIES OF SCOPEAbility to access best-of-breed technology almost always unavailable to smaller individual boards and the resources to continue accessing these technologies. Vendors are very receptive to working with ORTIS because it represents a growing number of boards and a large number of users which translates into ease of integration of services and products

4. REALTORS® IMAGE IMPROVED WITH COMPLETE INFORMATIONRather than a fragmented and incomplete slice of market information, ORTIS users benefit from access to all regional market information: Sellers benefit from the exposure of their listings throughout the region. Buyers have easy access to an expanded inventory. Armed with the latest data, our REALTOR® users can offer the highest level of service and knowledge to their buyers and sellers — and, in the process, reflect positively on their own reputation and that of the profession as a whole

5. DATA INTEGRITYUnder a regional umbrella, a high level of data integrity has been created and is now maintained. With the eyes and ears of our members, as well as the collective experience of our staff, we have now set, and value, a common, and by definition, a higher level of data integrity

6. STATISTICS ARE ACCURATE AND ALL-ENCOMPASSINGOverlapping areas are now contained in a single database which enables our users to provide the complete picture to their clients

7. MEMBERS NEED TO LEARN ONLY ONE SYSTEMRather than negotiate the vagaries of multiple systems, users can now navigate a single system. And, while our service provider CoreLogic is a U.S. firm, Matrix is Canadian technology developed by Tarasoft, which was acquired by CoreLogic several years ago and is supported by a team in Nelson, British Columbia

8. SPEEDY RESOLUTION OF TECHNICAL ISSUESCoreLogic has been extremely responsive and cooperative, working closing with staff first on the conversion process and on fine-tuning Matrix to meet our needs and wants. The IT Manager of a member Board acts as the liaison with CoreLogic and is in regular communication with programmer and database administrators. Our Task Force participates in weekly conference call with the CoreLogic programmer ensuring the continuing development of our Matrix system

9. STATE-OF-THE-ART SECURITYIn an excellent working relationship, ORTIS is working closely with Clareity to implement and monitor a remediation process that prevents any unauthorized access

10. STANDARD FORMS, MLS® RULES & POLICIESGone are the challenges of crossing a small road and suddenly operating in a totally new set of rules with their minor differences risking our members looking incompetent. The founding members of ORTIS went through a painstaking process of parsing down a discombobulated jumble of forms, rules and policies into a comprehensive set of forms that we could all live with, and indeed, thrive with. Both CoreLogic and ORTIS realize that new partners will bring with them new forms and data fields. The foundational system has been built with flexibility in mind to welcome the requirements of new partners while still maintaining the data integrity and ease of use that come with a regional system.